CES Spotlight blog posts shine a light on youth sector programs and initiatives in Ontario that are undertaking an evaluation journey in collaboration with YouthREX’s Customized Evaluation Supports (CES) at one of our regional hubs across Ontario. The blog posts describe the programs and initiatives and how evaluation supports their objectives to improve youth wellbeing.

Back in 2011, too many young people felt like their voices weren’t being heard. That’s when Matt Ross, a twenty-three year old Londoner, founded the London Youth Advisory Council (LYAC) for the purpose of bringing young people into conversations about important local decisions.

MISSIONThe London Youth Advisory Council (LYAC) exists to ensure that youth voices are integrated into local public policy decisions. LYAC seeks to reboot citizenship in London by encouraging youth to lead the charge against political apathy by playing a constructive role in the decision-making processes of the governments and institutions that influence their communities.

ABOUT THE PROGRAMThe Youth Council is composed of 15 Youth Ward Councillors, aged 15-25. Elected Youth Councillors meet in roundtable format to discuss and analyze a spectrum of issues relevant to youth to ensure youth voice is taken seriously by politicians and decision-makers.

“Communities are stronger when young people are included in public policy processes.”

– London Youth Advisory Council

LYAC provides a great deal of community outreach through their council elections, weekly working meetings, and community events, in addition to their advocacy work.

“We’d like to be able to explore different metrics and measures so we can better understand what we should be measuring, and through this process try to propose new measures that the city and governments should be also be tracking in order to better engage with young people.”

– London Youth Advisory Council

Why Customized Evaluation Supports?

When asked about why they wanted to incorporate CES into their programming, LYAC said: “We’re in a position where we have our first full time Executive Director, and we now have a Board composed entirely of young people, which means that we are youth governed and youth led. All of this is very exciting, and it’s a great opportunity to make sure we’re fully understanding our impact and can make sure we’re deepening it in the most effective ways.”

Currently, LYAC is in Step 05: Analyzing, Interpreting and Animating Evidence of the Action phase of our Evaluation Framework for Youth Wellbeing.

“Youth are involved in providing feedback through the evaluation process, and we in turn feed what we learn back to the youth in our program.”